THE ANESTHETIST AS DETERMINANT FACTOR OF QUALITY OF SURGICAL ANTIMICROBIAL PROPHYLAXIS - A SURVEY IN A UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL

In actual surgical antimicrobial prophylaxis, the anaesthetist adminis ters the drugs at induction of anaesthesia. In the first phase of our quality-of-use intervention study on antimicrobial drugs in a large un iversity hospital, information on the practice of antimicrobial prophy laxis was needed. The staff of 44 anaesthetists was interviewed by mea ns of a questionnaire. Response rate was 36/44 (82%). The anaesthetist s' method of administering surgical prophylaxis was rather uniform and inexpensive: cephalosporins were almost exclusively administered by b olus method. The main reason was that infusion was more cumbersome (ra nge 77-85%). Communication between surgeon and anaesthetist was report ed to be poor, and in two out of three operating departments, orders o f prophylaxis transmitted at or after induction accounted for more tha n 80%. Seventy-seven percent of the responders asked the surgeon if pr ophylaxis was necessary if they were in doubt; 20% responded that they checked it systematically. The data collected by the inquiry proved u seful in the process of optimizing surgical prophylaxis in our hospita l.